"I break at least one skateboard every week," Fobes said, running his finger along the edge of a board that has yet to meet its fate. "They crack or split. The wheels get messed up. Whatever."

It's not just the skateboards.

"A new pair of shoes lasts about two weeks, sometimes three. They lose their grip or rip at the seams, and your foot pushes out through the side."

At about $40 per board and around $80 per pair of shoes, Fobes' hobby takes a toll on his budget. That's why the 19-year-old Pleasant Lake resident has spent the last two years pursuing sponsorship agreements that would cover his costs and allow him to pursue his ultimate goal. Fobes wants to become a professional skateboarder and join a tour.

In the same way Fobes had to learn the tricks that have made him arguably the area's best skateboarder, he is learning how to market himself to the companies that make the equipment he buys ... and later destroys.

Last year, Fobes purchased a high-definition camcorder and notebook computer, so he could shoot and edit videos of himself. Those videos can be found on DVDs in skate shops around southern Michigan as well as the Internet. You could call it "YouTube Marketing."

"I always have a few DVDs with me," Fobes said. "I go to shops and ask if I can drop some off."

Fobes also sends them to companies and hopes the right person in the right position will notice him.

"I didn't have much of a plan, really," Fobes said. "I heard some other guys did the same thing and gave it a try."

To help pay his way, Fobes works at a skate shop in Jackson and has earned some money plying his trade. He holds demonstrations around the area  especially anywhere a new skate park opens  and has competed in events across the country.

However, the returns certainly have not covered the costs, he said.

Fobes' mother, Anita, strongly supports her son and has no idea how much money she and her son, a freshman at Jackson Community College, have put into his dream.

"It's a lot," she said with a laugh.

Some of that money went into a pole barn on the family's property, where Fobes and some friends built a small skate park. He even received high school credit for constructing the eight-step staircase he is seen jumping off in his videos.

"It was somewhere so we could skate year round," Fobes said. "(Anita) said we could build it if we left her storage space for her stuff."

All of this in an effort to become the best he can at something he is passionate about.

Andrew Sargeant supervises William Nixon Memorial Park and its skate park, where Fobes started skating in his early teenage years, and said Fobes is "without a doubt" the best skater in the area.

"He's way ahead of everybody else," Sargeant said. "He's very modest and very humble, though. The other kids out here look up to him. Anybody would like him."